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STORY/TIME: NARRATION AND ABSTRACTION

FIVE COLLEGE DANCE DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER 2016–2017

B ill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s classic STORY/TIME, choreographed in 2012 in collaboration with Janet Wong and com-pany members, was restaged on a double

cast of twenty FCDD dancers and performed on multiple campuses throughout the year. The work is an exhilarating and unusual hybrid—mixing the deeply personal, socially and politically charged dance making for which Mr. Jones is best known, with more abstract, formalist interests of his long-time mentor, Merce Cunningham. As New York Times critic Claudia La Rocco writes, “Bill T. Jones has long talked about his simultaneous attraction toward narration and abstraction, and about how his desire to lay claim to both of these artistic traditions has often left him in conflict. How to tell a good yarn but not be yoked to it structurally?” The cast was very fortunate to work first-hand with two illustrious, long-time company members, Jennifer Nugent and Shayla-Vie Jenkins, who shared the staging. The piece was especially challenging for its puzzle-like collage of break-neck movement phrases executed in ever-changing sequence, determined—à la John Cage—by chance procedures, all within the spatial confines of a taped floor-grid of 12 “boxes”. The piece also drew on original personal stories from the dancers, spoken live by different cast members at each performance. This was augmented by a multi-layered sound score, also sequenced by chance, and performed live by electronic musician/composer Jake Meginsky. The whole, exuberant, meticulously-calibrated cacophony unfolded each night beneath a large digital clock that visibly ticked away time’s passing, second by second, from 20 minutes down to the final zero. It was a wild ride for audiences as well as performers!

“Living and dying is not the big issue. The big issue is what you’re going to do with your time while you are here.” —Bill T. Jones n

Editor: Jim Coleman (FCDD Chair) Asst. Editor: Joanna Faraby Walker (FCDD)Design: New Ground Creative

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Amherst College | Hampshire College | Mount Holyoke College | Smith College | University of Massachusetts Amherst

Shayla-Vie Jenkins leading rehearsal

Bill T Jones

2 • FIVE COLLEGE DANCE DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER

FCDD ALUMNI NEWSAretha Aoki (SC MFA ‘08) is a choreographer, per-former, and, most recently, Assistant Professor of Dance at Bowdoin College. She was a co-curator of the 2016 Movement Research Spring Festival Hand Written Note(s). arethaaoki.wordpress.com

Rachel Aylward (UM ‘13) most recently performed in Gypsy at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre under the direction of Tony-nominated Marcia Milgrom Dodge. She is a proud new member of the Actor’s Equity Association. www.rachayl.com

Christiana Axelsen (MHC ’03) performed in May in Christopher Williams’s Il Giardino d’Amore at Danspace Project, Saint Mark’s, NYC.

Pele Bausch (HC ’96) taught the workshop “Experiments in Making & Describing”, at Move-ment Research in fall 2016. She also facilitated Spring Fieldwork 2017, with participants meeting weekly to share work at all stages of development and exchange.

Kim Brant (HC ’01) received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2017 Grants to Artists award and presented a new work, The Volume, at SculptureCenter, as part of their In Practice exhibition, January 29–March 27 2017. www.kimbrandt.net

Karen Scanlon Brown (UM ’81) is currently teaching at several local dance studios. She is also a dance teacher at Mount Wachusett Community College, and regularly choreographs and stage manages for local com-munity theater and area high schools. She is also a first responder for the Boston Marathon.

Shirah Burgey (UM ’11) earned her doctoral degree in Physical Therapy from Northeastern University. She continues to utilize her BA in Dance as a member of Urbanity Underground, where she performs and choreo-graphs. She also works part time as a personal trainer, and participates in fitness competitions as a bikini competitor.

Laurel Anne (Kleinschmidt) Boyd (UM ’97, SC MFA ’00) opened Ascendance Inner World Arts, a dance and expressive arts studio in Florence, MA. Along with colleagues Michelle Marroquin (HC ‘94, SC MFA ‘10) and Stephen Tracey-Ursrpung (SC MFA ‘12), she presented performances in June. When she is not teaching and mentoring young students in the community, Laurel is home with her two kids, Gabe (12) and Charlotte (7).

Nichole Canuso (HC ’96) Dance Company, performed Pandaemonium at Fringe Arts and New York Live in September, and The Garden at A.R.T. in Cambridge in October.

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BEBE MILLER IN RESIDENCEThe FCDD welcomed celebrated choreographer and performer Bebe Miller, who joined the Smith College faculty as the 2017 William Allan Neilson Professor. Over the course of the year, she presented three public events, each with her particular point of view and twist on the lecture format. In Syntax and Flow: dimensional meaning-making through the body in motion, Bebe presented a hybrid performance-talk-conversation, and was joined by Bebe Miller Company and FCDD faculty members Angie Hauser (Associate Professor/Smith College) and Bronwen MacArthur (Guest Artist/UMass). Bebe used real-time performance to help the audience see ‘how she sees.’ In her second presentation, Performing Memory, Conjuring Body, Bebe and Angie performed a lecture-in-performance, focusing on their seventeen-year collaboration and the exceptional autobiographical narrative of Bebe’s writings on dance, self, and history. Bebe’s final offering, Body as Archive: regarding the persistent essential friction of gesture, attention and memory, fit the more expected lecture format, yet

still had her particular performative flare. As she read from her notes, dropping pages to the floor when she was finished, the audience was trans-ported from dance studio, to childhood home, to summer camp in Maine, to the theater stage and back again. This fall, Bebe returns to the FCDD, where she and Angie will offer a repertory project for a cast of eighteen students from all five campuses.

“We’re all made up of these flashes of memory that can come uncalled-for, have no order and are sometimes not complete . . . but somehow they are what make us up as whole human beings.” —Bebe Miller n

NUDGE: THE CREATIVE PROCESS WITH KINSUN CHAN

“Repetition is freedom . . . now, do it again” were familiar watchwords from guest artist Kinsun Chan during the exhilarating, exhausting rehearsal process for his new work, Nudge, created with ballet-trained FCDD dancers and premiered on the FCDD’s annual Faculty Concert in March. Kinsun drew inspiration from the musical compositions of Canadian cellist and composer Julia Kent to create a large ensemble dance notable for its feline dynamism and striking visual de-signs. Kinsun is a Canadian-American artist whose works draw from a range of artistic disciplines, which he calls Multium Design. He studied art, graphic de-sign, and dance and has danced with the Louisville Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Bal-let Zurich and Ballet Basel. n

Bebe Miller and Angie Hauser

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Top: FCDD dancers in Nudge Bottom: Kinsun leading rehearsal

FOOD for THOUGHT“Curiosity is a great antidote to fear.”

—Meredith Monk

Amherst College | Hampshire College | Mount Holyoke College | Smith College | University of Massachusetts Amherst • 3

They performed The Garden of Forking Paths in May at The Bok.

Shih-Ming Li Chang (SC MFA ’86) and Lynn Frederiksen (SC MFA ’87) wrote a new book, Chinese Dance: In the Vast Land and Beyond, which will be published by Wesleyan University Press.

Joy Davis (SC MFA ’15) joined the Dance Division faculty at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2016. She has also been a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, and created commissioned works for Lindenwood University, Scottsdale Community College, and New Dialect Dance Company in Nashville. She taught Countertechnique and Improvisation at the American Dance Festival during summer 2017.

Barbie Diewald (SC MFA ‘16) was named a 2016 Bogliasco Fellow, and did a five-week residency in Liguria, Italy. In 2017, she received grants from the Northampton Arts Council and NEFA’s New England Dance Fund. She recently accepted a two-year Guest Artist appointment at Mount Holyoke College. Her current work Eighteen Refrains Re:Rhoda pre-miered this spring at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, with additional performance dates at the APE Gallery in Northampton, New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Festival at University Settlement in NYC, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

Maura Donohue (SC ‘92, SC MFA ‘08) is Associate Professor of Dance at Hunter College and a Faculty Fellow at Roosevelt House Public Policy Insti-tute. Her essay “Ambivalent Selves: Asian Female Body in American Concert Dance” was published in Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance (Wisconsin Press). She served as curator for the La MaMa Moves 2017 & EstroGenius 2017 Festivals, is on the board of Move-ment Research, and the NY Dance & Performance (Bessies) Awards Commit-tee. She premiered Tides Project in May 2017. She is still raising two humans in NYC.

Brendan Drake (UM ‘09) presented The Big Finish at the 2017 La MaMa Moves Festival. In May, he premiered a work-in-progress at Abrons Arts Center in collaboration with composer Matthew Ricketts, and he is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance.

Martha Eddy (HC ’74) released her new book Mindful Movement, and was featured on the Politics and Somatics panel at Hampshire College in February.

Matthew Elder (SC MFA ’14) accepted a position at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD, and at Georgetown Uni-versity as a visiting Guest Artist. His two years in DC included dancing with Christopher K. Morgan

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Hip hop is booming in the five colleges—classes are packed, student clubs are thriving and the FCDD has steadily increased its offerings. This year featured several new courses as well as commissioned repertory projects with two of the country’s leading female hip hop performer/choreographers.

Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie was in residence last fall at Smith to create Swept In on FCDD dancers. She is a Bessie award-winning performer/choreographer based in NYC, who, as artistic director of Ephrat Asherie Dance, has presented work at the Apollo Theater, FiraTarrega, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, Summerstage, and The Yard. Her first evening length work, A Single Ride, received a Bessie nomi-nation in 2012 for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer. She is a regular guest performer with Dorrance Dance and has worked and collaborated with Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin and Gus Solomons Jr, among others. Ephrat is on faculty at Broadway Dance Center and is a founding member of the all-female house dance collective, MAWU. www.ephratasherie.com.

Jennifer Weber came to Mount Holyoke in the fall to create a hip hop version of Firebird on FCDD dancers. She is the artistic direc-tor of Decadancetheatre. The company has toured across the US, UK, Japan and France in venues such as Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Apollo, The Kennedy Center, London’s Southbank Center, San Francisco Hip Hop Dance Festival, and Bumbershoot in Seattle. Jennifer has also choreographed for the NBA’s Miami Heat, American Express, Uber, Ulta, L’Oreal Matrix, Reebok, Bloomberg, Philosophy, Marc Jacobs, CK1 and the UK TV show Blue Peter. Re-cently she choreographed the US Premiere of Bryony Lavery’s Stockholm at Stageworks/Hudson, Trouble, A New Rock Musical at the New York Musical Festival and James Brown–Get On the Good Foot for The Apollo Theater with director Otis Sallid. Currently, Jennifer is the director and choreographer of The Hip Hop Nutcracker, which is in its third season of national touring.

The FCDD continues its hip hop offerings in 2017-18 with more courses and a fall repertory project with Shakia “the Key” Johnson. Shakia is a wildly popular teacher (teaching classes this year at AC, MHC and SC), who is also a highly sought after performer and choreographer. She has performed for numerous hip hop events and has opened for concerts by Fat Joe, Jadakiss, 112, Charlie Baltimore, Kima from Total and Omarion. Additionally, she choreographed a hip hop num-ber for a Boston Celtics half-time show. Shakia has toured the US and abroad dancing with Face Da Phlave Entertainment and Illstyle and Peace Productions. n

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Top: FCDD dancers in Ephrat Asherie’s Swept In Middle: Shakia Johnson Bottom: FCDD dancers in Jennifer Weber’s hip hop Firebird

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HIP HOP TAKES OFF


and being named one of the five “Up and Coming Dance Artists of DC” by the Ngoma Reader. In NYC, Matthew now dances with three local companies, recently completed an apprenticeship with Kate Weare, and continues working towards his second MA (in Social Work) at Hunter College, to become a full-time art rehabilitation specialist.

Angelica Falcinelli (SC’12) is a Dance/Movement Therapist living in Brooklyn, NY. She works as a Social Worker/Creative Arts Therapist in a preventive services program where she counsels families that are at risk of having their children placed in care.

Dan Farbman (AC ’01) began a new job as a law professor at Boston College Law School.

Olana Flynn (HC ‘13) started the MFA program in Experimental Chore-ography this fall at the University of California Riverside. She received a Deans Fellowship and full funding for her studies.

Olivia Fauver (SC ’14) lives in Seattle, and dances with the contemporary Butoh company The Three Yells. She also works with Faunix Dance, a multimedia dance company directed by Ashleigh Claire Miller. She was a guest artist with the physical theater company DangerSwitch, and is also working with a group of dancers on her own work, THAW, which premiered at Converge Dance Festival in April.

Meghan Frederick (HC ’07) had residencies at Denmark Arts Center, Mary-mount Manhattan College and Barn Arts Collective. She presented new mate-rial in March in Boston and in May in NYC, and ran a week-long movement studies course at Summer Festival of the Arts in Bar Harbor, ME in July.

Karen Frances Freeberg (UM ’14) is an actor based in NYC. She recently worked on television in The Cobblestone Corridor, The Haunting, Six Degrees of Murder, and Trending. Karen plays Everby in the award-winning film Silence Equals, and also performed in the New York Fringe Festival in The Co-Operatives. Her first self-produced film, Kit, just wrapped production.

Katy Wakeman Forline (MHC ‘81), uses the embodied anatomy and physiology from her dance experience at MHC to enhance her practice of massage therapy and movement education, Yoga Tune Up®, InterPlay® and the recent birth of her new LLC, Move2Joy. She recently returned to the MHC studios to teach a movement session at Reunion II in May.

Lily Gold (HC ’08) premiered Good Mud at Danspace Project in April.

Merli V. Guerra (MHC ‘09) continues to co-direct Luminarium Dance Company in Boston, with Kimberleigh A. Holman (MHC ‘09), now in its seventh season.

PEARL PRIMUS: RACE, THE BODY AND DANCED MEMORY

MASTER CLASSES WITH MAJOR ARTISTS

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Ninoska M’bewe Escobar

Clockwise from top: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Linda Celeste Sims and Yannick Lebrun, Jannet Galdamez leading the Contra-Tiempo master class, Sydney Dance Company

In the late 80’s, towards the end of her illustrious artistic and academic career, modern dance pioneer, Black

dance icon and renowned dance anthropologist, Dr. Pearl Primus, joined the FCDD faculty to teach courses in African dance, African American Studies and An-thropology. So how fortuitous it was this year to have Ninoska M’bewe Escobar, a Consortium for Faculty Diversity visiting scholar in the Department of Theater and Dance at Amherst College, deliver our annual FCDD lecture. M’bewe’s research focuses on the dancing body, race, feminism, history and memory, and cultural production in the contexts of social formation and social change, and her PhD research is more specifically focused on the legacy of Dr. Primus. In her lecture to a packed Kirby Theater at Amherst College, she exam-ined Primus’s contributions to the field, especially her emphasis on Black dance and performance as powerful markers of Black experience, politicization and agency.

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Prior to the performance of the evening-length Agua Furiosa at the UMass Fine Arts Center in early October, company rehearsal director for CONTRA-TIEMPO, Jannet Galdamez and com-pany member Samad Guerra, led FCDD dancers in a Guaguanco/Rumba master class that featured live drumming.

The internationally-renowned Sydney Dance Company, known for their powerhouse contempo-rary dancing, came to the Five Colleges in February, performing new works by artistic director Rafael Bonachela, and offering master classes to FCDD dancers. The company philosophy is founded on the universality of dance and boasts the largest public dance program in Australia.

This year’s season of major touring companies culminated in April with a performance by the legendary Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, including Ailey’s signature masterpiece, Revelations. The company offered several master classes for FCDD dancers on different campuses, and our own Kristin Young (MHC ’97)—the company’s stage manager—brought FCDD students backstage after the performances. n

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FOOD for THOUGHT“There is an energy within . . . pure strength . . . the energy of the person which is put in different forms,

in different shapes . . . once we discover that energy, I think that such a thing as dance becomes such a delight because you’re moving on a stream that is you but it is even over and beyond you . . . ”

—Katherine Dunham


FACULTY UPDATES 2017In summer 2016, Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser (Associate Professors, Smith College) taught their annual Dance Impro-visation and Performance Intensive (a week-long intensive for professional dancers and choreographers), at Earthdance; taught and performed at Bates Dance Festival where the two co-directed the evening-length Moving in the Moment performance; and created a new duet The Profession of Poetry for the Different Voices concert. Angie continued her work with The Making Room Project, a process-based series of small artist- convenings considering and employing the shared and divergent making practices of Bebe Miller and Susan Rethorst. In August 2017, she was a featured artist-faculty at the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation. Angie continues work on a new Bebe Miller Company choreography to premiere at the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts in October 2017. In spring 2017, Chris and Angie received promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure from Smith College.

Rodger Blum (Professor and Department Chair,

Smith College), a recipient of Smith College’s Grant for New Directions in Scholarship and Teaching, continues to explore avenues that combine dance, technology and the handmade. He premiered a new installation in the spring at Amherst College. The Silk Room is a single-track video projected on and through sixty feet of hand printed organza and choreographed on company members of Pilobolus Dance Theatre. In the fall, he created Six Dances for Lou on a FCDD cast—set to the music of Lou Harrison and incorpo-rating 150 bamboo poles.

Jim Coleman and Terese Freedman (Professors, Mount Holyoke College) presented a weeklong, interactive, public video dance installation at A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton. Jim performed in the annual Seattle Men in Dance Festival and also created several dance video outdoor installations at the Colleges. Jim and T will retire at the end of 2018 and move to Seattle.

During spring 2017, beginning with residents at Western Massachusetts Hospital and currently serving patients at Tewksbury Hospital, Paul Dennis (Associate Professor, UMass) worked with Emma George (UM ’18), Aubrey Johnson (SC ’18) and Maggie Golder (MHC ’18), in collaboration with licensed occupational

therapists and physical therapists, to begin the design of a program integrating choreutics, dance/movement, Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals to observe and evaluate patients with Huntington’s Disease and other neuro-degenerative conditions. The program examines the role of the environment and exercise in altering the course of these disorders, and hopes to demonstrate ways that dance is uniquely positioned to effect physical, emotional, sensory and cognitive change.

Charles and Rose Flachs (Professors, Mount Holyoke College) attended the CORPS de Ballet International Conference in Sarasota, Florida, following a gruel-ing 100-mile bike ride along the Erie Canal. This conference titled, “Traditions in Classical Training: Strength-ening Communities”

included taking classes and attending lectures with the legendary Ramona de Saá, Director of the Cuban National Ballet School. Following the conference, the Flachs directed the Massachusetts Academy of Ballet Summer program and taught master classes at the Connecticut Concert Ballet, the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet and

dancEnlight. In prepara-tion for local and national ballet competitions, they choreographed and coached young dancers who went on to win medals and place in both the Youth American Grand Prix and the Connecticut Classic Ballet Competitions. In June of 2017, Rose co-taught a Vaganova teacher seminar, and Charles taught master

Angie Hauser

Jim Coleman performing at Seattle’s Men in Dance Festival

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Merli recently completed a six-month guest cohort position with We Create—celebrating female artists in Boston—in which she created new work tackling Alzheimer’s and memory loss. She also received a grant to bring Luminarium to Fuller Craft Museum for a one-week residency, building five large-scale art installations, each with a dancer inside—continuing her breathing installation series that began in 2011.

Annie Heath (UM ’15) recently presented new works, including REV at TADA Youth Theater (NYC), Score, meet space at UMass, and The Stable Edge at Arts on Site (NYC).

Carina Ho (SC ’09) has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to promote access to dance for people with disabilities in Uruguay. Her project goal is to deepen her understanding of how artists and educa-tors in countries where integrated dance has been recently introduced are influencing the discourse surrounding inclusivity of people with disabilities in the arts.

CJ Holm’s (HC ’04) latest duet, this is an abstract dance about a dog, premiered at STUFFED at Judson Church in December. He sang in the chorus for Iele Paloumpis’s new work at DraftWork at Danspace Project, and he presented his one-person musical dramedy about white fragility, Becky’s Lament, at the Exponential Festival in January.

Julia Hudson (SC ’08) graduated from the University of Roehampton in London with an MA in Dance Studies with a focus on digital archives. Though her day job is in travel, she trains in Horton with David Blake at London’s DanceWorks studio, and performs with City Acad-emy Contemporary Dance.

Emma Jaster (AC ’07) is working in New York as a choreographer and movement director. She just completed work on Heartbeat Opera’s adaptation of Madame Butterfly which was featured and reviewed in the New York Times. She recently founded an international collective of performing artist mothers creating a new work together each week for a year. You can follow and join in their Artist Residency in Motherhood by checking out #mamaisamaker or following @notapapercrane on instagram. www.emmajaster.com

Jane Jerardi (HC’ 97) presented her work, again (again) at Links Hall in Chicago in January.

Renata Kiburyte (SC ’04) has been living in Madrid for over ten years and is currently working on her PhD in Philosophy and Dance. She also studies Flamenco and Graham technique.

Eliza Larson (SC MFA’13) expanded her Smith graduate research on gender among choreogra-phers and artistic directors into a chapter recently

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Rodger Blum’s The Silk Room

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published in the 2017 book Dance and Gender: An Evidence-Based Ap-proach (University Press of Florida). In January, she performed with Tahni Holt in Sensation/Disorientation, and in March premiered her latest evening-length work In Circadia with her company Fault Line Dance. She got married in August.

Jennifer Lawson (MHC ‘91) is a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. De-partment of State. Much of her public diplomacy work concentrates on arts, education, and professional exchange programs. She has performed with a modern dance company in Serbia, taught dance to second graders in rural Guatemala, brought aerial dancers to Ecuador and coordi-nated a performance of traditional local dances for Dr. Jill Biden’s official visit to Zambia. Last year, Jennifer was on sabbatical in Paris while her husband completed his tour at the U.S. Embassy there. Next stop: Washington, DC in fall 2017.

Stephanie Mahler (SC ’16) recently published her book, Reflections: A Place Called Ponderosa, on intersections between dance practice, philosophy and environmental con-sciousness in the context of Ponderosa, the festival in Stolzenhagen, Germany, that she has directed for several years.

Kristen Mangione (SC ’94) is the founder and director of ZenSpace in Hoboken, NJ, a dance and healing arts center offering dance, yoga and meditation. In 2017, ZenSpace’s dance company in residence was launched, and premiered its first work to Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe. The company is the culmi-nation of over 10 years of Kristen’s dreams of dance, community, and transfor-mation coming together. She teaches, choreographs, and performs, as well as leading retreats through ZenSpace.

Michelle Marroquin (HC ‘94, SC MFA ‘10) earned her license as a Physical Therapist Assistant last year, and has been work-ing in a hospital rehab cen-ter helping people recover from traumatic injuries. Recently, she has been choreographing two very different dances: Garden of Eve, and Love Poem for my Parents, that will premier in September 2017 at Studio 4 in Northampton.

Christopher-Rasheem McMillan (HC ’07) has accepted a tenure track position at the Univer-sity of Iowa, one specially designed across three departments to combine his areas of expertise. He will begin fall 2017 as Assistant Professor of Dance Theory and Practice and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and affiliate Faculty in Religious Studies.

Desiree Monet-Anderson (MHC ’74) oversees the health and safety, general happiness, and level of community inclusion for 41 individuals with special needs, including her two

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classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet Society. The Flachs’ current research interests focus on the inter-section of active stretching and ballet technique.

Deborah Goffe (Assistant Professor, Hampshire College) brought two long-term creative pro-cesses to their culminating performance phases: Privy and Reaction Bubble. Following a six-year development process, and with support from the Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, Privy premiered in December 2016 as the first in an anticipated series of performance salons Deborah will host in her home. Unfolding through a collaborative process with Kelly Silliman (SC MFA ’13) as dramaturg, Privy dives into personal narra-tive, grappling with ideas of disclosure and conceal-ment, reproduction and identity. Reaction Bubble grew out of a four-year collaboration with LoVid (a multimedia duo comprised of NYC-based Tali Hinkus and Kyle Lapidus) and Matt Tower (a Hartford-based ceramicist). The multi-media installation premiered at Real Art Ways in March 2017, with seven performances of the cho-reographic work before the exhibit’s closing in June.

Leslie Frye Maietta (Guest Artist, UMass) collaborated in the fall with colleagues Tom Vacanti (SC MFA ‘95) and Paul Dennis on Peril in Thine Eye, an immersive dance theater produc-tion of Romeo and Juliet. Leslie was able to work with some of her favorite student collaborators to restage her work waist deep for the FCDD Faculty Concert at Amherst Col-lege in March. She is also developing a solo titled Solo not Solo that she presented in process in March at Jennifer Muller/

The Works Studio in NYC. She’s hoping this will be a part of an evening-length piece to be presented at her home this fall. At UMass in the spring, Leslie directed and designed a new model for the junior dance majors to present their choreography. The concert, titled X-hibition, was a large installation performance presented in collaboration with the Art Department and their digital media students.

Candice Salyers (Visiting Artist, Mount Holyoke College, SC MFA ‘03) recently published an article in the Journal of Performance and Mindful-ness (UK). She received an American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship for 2016–2017, and will spend this year working on a new solo per-formance and book project. She has been awarded artist residencies from Joya Art + Ecologia (Spain) and Green Olive Arts (Morocco) for the coming year.

Marilyn Sylla (Five College Lecturer in Dance) and Sekou Sylla (FCDD Musician) were

happy to teach African

dance at Jacob’s Pillow

Dance Festival during

summer 2017. They will be

guest artists at Colorado

Mesa University in Grand

Junction during fall 2017,

where they will teach and

set a piece for CMU’s

dance concert. Marilyn

and Sekou were honored

when their former student,

Jennifer Kyker (MHC ’02),

now an assistant professor

of musicology at the

University of Rochester,

gave a gift to the Mount

Holyoke Fund in their

honor. Marilyn was

delighted to once again

direct Immigrant Voices,

sponsored by the Center

for New Americans, and

presented at the Shea Theater.

In September 2016, Lester Tomé (Assistant Professor, Smith College) joined the

yearlong seminar “Modes

and Models of Making”

as a fellow of the Kahn

Liberal Arts Institute. In

November, he presented a

paper about the National

Ballet of Cuba’s decolonial

approach to the classics in

a conference of the Society

of Dance History Scholars

at Pomona College. He started 2017 by signing a contract with Oxford Uni-

versity Press for the publication of his book The Body Politic: Ballet and Revolution in Cuba. Recently, he joined the Editorial Board of Dance Research Journal. This last year, two of Lester’s articles saw the light, in the maga-zine Cuba en el ballet and in the Oxford Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography.

Wendy Woodson (Professor and Department Chair, Amherst College) wrote and performed a new monologue, Fire Away, in April for Earth, Itself, an interdisciplinary program sponsored by the Institute for Environment and Society at Brown University. This program is designed to stimulate conversations and collaborations across the natural and social sciences, humanities, and the arts. She performed her monologue about air entitled Drift (originally created for the same program at Brown)

as part of the HUT series at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought in Northampton. Wendy was invited to give the 2017 Jackie Pritzen Lecture by Five Colleges, Inc. She was artist-in- residence at A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton during July 2017, where she began work on a new series of video and dance installations.

Wendy Woodson Lester Tomé

Connie, Rose and Charles Flachs with Ramona de Saa

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ALUMS! STAY IN TOUCH WITH US!

Dear Alums: Please send us your

e-mail and other contact information!

E-mail us at [email protected]

Leslie Frye Maietta’s Waist Deep

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children, thirty various types of poultry, and nine pygmy goats. She lives on a small farm, which was her early childhood dream.

Leah Moriarty (UM ‘10) is currently based in Brooklyn, working with choreographers Joya Powell and Souleymane Badolo. Her work has been recently performed at Dixon Place, Arts On Site and Triskelion. She was an artist in residence at the Denmark Art Center in Maine this summer and continues to work for ThisWorldMusic, a Ghanaian dance and drum intensive study abroad program.

Anne Morris (SC ‘03) lives in Greensboro, NC with her wife and daughters. She is currently the Co-Executive Director of the Dance Project, a nonprofit dance organiza-tion; she also coordinates the NC Dance Festival and teaches dance to children and adults through the School at City Arts.

Cathy Nicoli (MFA ’04) is currently Assistant Professor of Dance and Performance Studies at Roger Williams University, where she is also very active in social justice and environmental sustain-ability initiatives across campus. She continues to work independently as a choreographer and dancer.

Gwen Niven (HC ‘07) graduated this spring with an MS in Occupa-tional Therapy from Tufts University.

Ailey Picasso (HC ‘14) begins the MFA in Dance program at the University of Iowa this fall.

Ellen Setchko Palmerlee (MHC ’16) is dancing with the UPside Modern Dance Company in Healdsburg, CA. She is also an as-sistant for a jazz/modern dance class and has been creating a lot of her own choreography for the class. She is looking into auditions around the Bay Area—particularly for site specific projects.

MiRi Park (UM ‘00) is the Associate Choreographer for the 20th Anniversary Tour of RENT. She also teaches hip hop at UC Santa Barbara and CalState Channel Islands. She resides in Thousand Oaks, CA with her husband and two children.

Marta Renzi (HC ’75) While working on post-production on Her Magnum Opus in February, Marta had time to go through her archives and make some of that available to see. To view one of her seldom-seen b&w experimental videos featuring David Thom-son, go to: martarenzi.blogspot.com

Jen Rosenblit (HC’05) collaborated with musician Geo Wyeth in The Inflection Point, a companion to Rosenblit’s Clap Hands presented at the Invisible Dog in 2016. They were exploring what they describe as “the indiscern-ible moment of change”, at The Kitchen through March 4, 2017.

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The FCDD welcomes a number of new faculty, guest artists and staff this year. UMass is pleased to announce the appointment Molly Christie Gonzalez as Assistant Professor of Dance. Molly is a dance education specialist with a MA in Dance Education, New York State Pre K–12 Dance Teacher Certification and edTPA National Certification from The College at Brockport (Brockport, NY), and a MFA in Performance and Choreography. She has certi-fication from the Institute for Dunham Technique, and has been on the faculty at the Annual Dunham Technique Seminar and the Certification Workshop. She co-founded Trio Dourado Brazilian Dance Company in Philadelphia, was a member of Olorun Cuban Folklore Company, and a soloist with the Afro-Cuban theatrical production Patakin in San Francisco. She has conducted dance and music research in Havana, Cuba, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and Puerto Rico, and in 2000 received a Leeway Foundation grant

to study traditional dance and music in Dakar, Senegal. Molly will be teaching a range of new courses in dance education and community engagement.

Mount Holyoke College welcomes Barbie Diewald (SC MFA ‘16) to a two-year Visiting Artist position. Barbie is a prolific performer/choreographer whose work has been presented in New York City (BAM, Movement Research, The Chocolate Fac-tory, BAX, etc.), Western Massachusetts (A.P.E. Gallery, the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought), and abroad at Ponderosa (Germany) and the Bogliasco Foundation Center (Italy), where she was a 2016 Fellow. Recently, Barbie has been serving as Associate Director for Programming at the School for Contempo-rary Dance and Thought (SCDT), emphasizing racial and gender diversity, advocating for international artists, and support systems for emerging New England choreographers. Her current work, Eighteen Refrains re:Rhoda, uses Virginia Woolf’s fiction as both dramaturgical touchstone and choreographic proposition, and premiered in June in Northampton.

Amherst College welcomes NYC choreographer/performer Dante Brown to a one-year position as Assistant Professor of Dance. Dante began his dance training at Wesleyan University, and went on to receive his MFA in Choreography and Performance from The Ohio State University. As a performer, Dante has worked with art-ists such as Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Christal Brown, David Dorfman, Kendra Portier, and Noa Zuk, among others. As an educator, Dante has taught a range of classes at Bates College, Dancewave, Dance New Amsterdam, East Village Dance Project, Gibney Dance Center, Mark Morris Dance Center, Peridance Capezio Center and The Ohio State University. Among other courses, Dante is offering a new technique/repertory course titled, “Ensemble Dancing in Community”.

The FCDD was very happy to welcome Kat Rother this past year as the new Dance Production Assistant for the department. Alongside Matthew Adelson, she did remarkable work over-seeing and streamlining concert productions across the five campuses. Kat received her BA from Dickinson College and has been working in theatre and dance for over ten years, including as a freelance stage manager in New York City, and with The Public Theater, Two River Theatre Company, Noche Flamenca, and Portland Stage Company. n

Molly Christie González

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FOOD for THOUGHT“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, nothing to store away,

no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls . . . nothing but the fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.”

—Merce Cunningham

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This current era has been full of upheaval and transition for the FCDD. In recent years, a number of senior faculty members have decided to move on to the next phase of their lives and make room for a new generation of dance artist/educators. This year was the last for Paul Arslanian (UM), Constance Hill (HC/FCDD), Paul Matteson (AC/MHC), and Candice Salyers (MHC Visiting Artist). These amazing teacher/artists will each be deeply missed! While this has caused much sadness, it has also given rise to a sense of rejuvenation and excite-ment for the future. There is a growing, collective feeling that the FCDD is poised to flourish and lead dance in higher education in new and innovative ways.

For the past 17 years, as Five College Professor of Dance based at Hampshire College, Constance Valis Hill traveled regularly to teach on all five campuses, offering an astonishing variety of innovative courses in dance history, performance theory, jazz stud-ies, choreography on camera, and feminist performance. She also worked with her Hampshire colleagues to establish a Black Stud-ies core curriculum at the college. She will be remembered by generations of students and colleagues for her prodigious intellec-tual energy, her probing questions and deep curiosity about the predicament and power of dance in the world, as well as her infec-tious enthusiasm and quick, contagious laughter. In the broader, national and international field of dance scholarship, Constance is renowned for her groundbreaking writings on Jazz and Tap dance. Her book Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers (2000) received the Deems Taylor ASCAP Award; and her most recent book, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010), was supported by grants from the John D. Rockefeller and John Simon Guggenheim foundations. Her colleague and fellow dance historian Lester Tomé writes, “Constance situated herself among a generation of scholars who, in the 1990s, expanded the scope of dance research to include popular dance and Afrodiasporic traditions. She was part of the project of questioning a Eurocentric dance canon.” More locally, she will be remembered for the impressive array of new, interdisciplinary

courses she developed over the years, including many collaborations with colleagues from dance, film and music.

Paul Arslanian, beloved accompanist, teacher, and musical coordinator for the UMass Dance program will be remembered for his encyclopedic knowledge of a variety of musical traditions and his consummate performing skills in bringing these to vibrant life in classrooms and on stages at UMass and the FCDD. Throughout his career, Paul has also been very active in the larger music and dance community. He is a renowned musician in the region, and most fittingly, in his final year at UMass, he received the prestigious NEPR Arts and Humanities Award, honoring his inspirational and tireless work in developing the Northampton Jazz Workshop.

After five years of amazing contributions to the FCDD as teacher, choreographer and performer, Paul Matteson made the very tough decision to take a leave from academia and move back to NYC to pursue a variety of professional projects. His thoughtful, sweet-tempered presence; wild, viscerally-charged movement phrases; astonishing virtuosity and humanity as a performer; and his many imaginative and original choreographies will be deeply missed by all, especially students and colleagues at his twin home campuses of Amherst and Mount Holyoke. We look forward to seeing him in performance again soon!

Whether in adjunct or full-time replacement teaching roles, for the past two decades, Candice Salyers (SC MFA ‘03) has had a tremen-dous impact as a teacher, performer, and artistic mentor for students and colleagues in the FCDD, especially at Mount Holyoke and Smith, where she frequently taught. This year, she received an American As-sociation of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship, and will spend this coming year working on a new solo performance and book project. As a teacher, Candice will be remembered for her tireless, personal, and inspiring artistic mentoring relationships with each of her students. n

Candice Salyers

Paul ArslanianPaul Matteson

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Laura Ann Samuelson (HC’11) performed her project, practicing, in rep with square product theatre’s production of Damaris Webb’s THE BOX MARKED BLACK: Tales from a Halfrican American Growing up Mulatto in Colorado. This fall, Laura Ann will begin the MFA in Dance program at the University of Colorado Boulder where she was granted a Center for the Humanities and The Arts’ Arts & Sciences Fellowship.

Kerry Schaefer (AC ’01) has been busy with the non-dance activities of starting a medical practice as a holistic family doctor and raising two children in Portland, Oregon. She has been keeping connected with dance through exploring aerial arts, pole dance and dancing her 11-month old to sleep. She is excited to be on the board of a local non-profit, Dance Wire (dancewirepdx.org) dedicated to helping enrich and support dancers and dancer health in the Portland community.

Brenda Lynn Siegel (HC ’00) is the Executive/Artistic Director of the Southern Vermont Dance Festival.

Jenny Spicola (MHC ‘15) just completed her first of two years en route to obtaining a Master of Arts degree in Spanish at University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus in Linguistics. Jenny taught beginner-level Spanish at UW and has recently started teaching a dance fitness class for women over 40.

Stephen Tracy-Ursprung (SC MFA ‘12) just started as an Assistant Professor in Dance Studies at Dean College.

Mariana Valencia (HC ’06) offered a lab and per-formed at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought in Northampton in March.

Kristen Duffy Young (UM ‘00) is celebrating her 10th year as Director of the Colleges of the Fenway Dance Project, a performance ensemble of more than 200 college students in the Fenway area of Boston. In addition to serving as adjunct faculty for Dance at Em-manuel College, she is also a faculty member of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies certification program at Lesley University. This summer, she performed with her company Accumulation Dance, at the Southern Vermont Dance Festival. accumulationdance.org

Joanne Casey Zullig, (UM ’83) is a dance/movement therapist and licensed professional counselor in NJ. She works with children and adult victims of domestic violence. Currently, she is doing dance/move-ment therapy work in the women’s prison in NJ and has been asked to speak at the National Dance Therapy Conference in San Antonio, fall 2017. n

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